Dying Embers
by NY GE Pyromaniac
Summary: Second installation to the DesirePryo triology. Picks up few months after the White House incident. Painful truths realzied and a war is eminent on a larger than previously belived to be possible scale. Sorry I suck at summaries. On Hiatus


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but Alexandra, her family, their powers and of course the story. Try and sue me, you'll get about $10 jaja!

**A/N:** So, I haven't written a fanfiction in about two years and I've decided that I wanted to continue to do so with the second installation of the DesirePyro trilogy. It picks up a couple of months after what happened at the White House and well, you'll just have to read to see what happens. Enjoy! R&R! CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISIM ONLY! Seriously, any little kids that have mouths just to breathe and fingers to scratch their asses should keep it that way. Please and thank you!

_**Dying Embers**_

**Chapter One: **_**Lost Hope, Rising Desires**_

_**Alexandra's POV**_

I stood leaning against the wall on the fire escape, watching silently as a shadowy figure crawled across the alley and into a dumpster, and sipping down the warmth that only a mug of champurrado could contain...

It was close to midnight and I'd just barely gotten home from a long ass day of the usual. My muscles ached and my mind was spinning, but I'd wound myself down into a peaceful calm just as soon as the chocolate atole touched my tongue. It was probably going to be the last bit of calm for a while so I took it in in its entirety and savored every drop of it - the champurrado too. As it made its way down into my stomach, it warmed me to the core - something that I hadn't felt for a long time.

Continuing to watch the figure as it searched the dumpster, I inhaled deeply and held the breath for a moment just wondering what went right in any case so that _that _ figure wasn't me. _ Why aren't I down there? Why am I warm and it isn't?_ The question didn't get answered but nor did I ponder it too long for I had heard a helicopter approaching fast. _ Fucking mutant check..._ I exhaled and stood up straight, cupping the mug with both hands, trying to absorb just a little bit more heat from it before taking pity on the figure below and floating it down to it. A moment or so passed without the creature taking notice of the mug, so I cleared my throat softly, almost inaudibly to make him notice it. The creature, toad-like in form and with bright yellow eyes that bulged almost out of his face, looked up and its darkened, anger filled gaze met with the mug and slowly climbed up to meet my own. Said gaze of that creature was contorted into one filled with question and doubt. I nodded and he took the mug before hurrying off, jumping - no, hopping from the dumpster and off into the darkness from which it had come from.

I almost smiled then, but the sounds of the copter coming even closer made me skip that step and just slink my way back through the window and into the apartment's living area. Here, my two companions had been watching me most intently.

"You do know that _I'm_ still hungry, right?" asked the shorter of the two, eying me malevolently...harshly with nearly closed emerald green eyes.

"Your belly may not be full but it has something other than just acid and painful gas bubbles in it," I said, turning away from those emerald eyes and heading to my room, not in the mood to fight that night. The day had taken too much of a toll on me for such incommodities.

"How do you know that _that_ thing didn't already eat? You're putting other mutants before your own family?"

I stopped at the doorframe of my room and turned slightly - not enough to face him - and said, "How many meals would you have to have missed before you dig in the trash for food? You ate bread and drank champurrado, Anthony. You may not be completely full, but you're full enough so that today you can say that the food left in trashcans disgusts you and you won't eat it." I turned to face his silent glare head on. "And if I were putting other mutants before my own family you'd better trust that this apartment would be filled to capacity and beyond with everyone _but_ you two. But no...I don't put anyone before you two and it's just the three of us in here..."

He merely sat there in what was probably the hardest armchair in NYC and continued to glare at me maliciously. But it didn't bother me for I knew that he knew that I had said the last word on the matter and that I was right.

"Now go to your room and get those boards up before the helicopter passes." With that said, I turned into my hollowed out room, adorned with a single mattress, an old oil lantern and two long sheets of wood near the window that had nails sticking out of them. A cold shiver travelling up my spine with a tinge of guilt lining my stomach at the sight of the boards and the thought of why they were necessary, I shut the door behind me after I heard the two men get up and walk to their rooms. I went to the windows and quickly stuck the boards onto the walls so that they covered the windows perfectly. No light shone in or out when I was satisfied with their placement. Feeling the invasion of my body by the aches and pains of the day, I decided that laying down would be best and walked over to the mattress, plopping down onto it with all of my weight and immediately regretting it. Dust rose from the mattress (as always but more so this time as I'd fallen with a great _thump_) and a few of the spring tore through the fabric of it and scraped my bare arms. I hissed and sat bolt straight up just as my bedroom door opened and in came Anthony, an unassuming look on his face.

"Hey," I said, rubbing my arms and eying him, slowly, wondering what was up.

"Hey," he said, stepping forward once and stopping just short of another step. He fidgeted on the spot for a moment, probably feeling my eyes scan his tall, lanky form - insecure and yet strong. "Listen, Ali, I - ."

I cut him off, raising my hand in the air to signal that he didn't need to go on. Smiling at him, I patted the space next to me on the mattress and moved slightly so that he could sit comfortably.

He didn't sit, but laid down instead and pulled me with him, wrapping his arms around me and holding me to him as he'd done the days following the White House fiasco to help me sleep.

I fully welcome his embrace and the calming effect it had on me. "Mmmm, feels good."

He scoffed lightly and squeezed a little tighter for good measure. "It's been a while since I could feel how warm you are..." He trailed off as I adjusted myself and buried my face in his chest. That had been his signal for me getting ready to fall asleep so he just quieted down and put his chin softly on my head.

Breathing in the smell of chocolate off of him was making me relax more than I had expected to that day and I appreciated it so much that I didn't want to fall asleep yet, so I shifted again and looked up at Anthony, who'd been staring off at the wall. I felt sorry for him most days. He'd never asked for this... I mean, none of us did but he was younger than me and that's what made it that much harder for me to deal with.

I guess he'd felt me staring at him and knew what I was thinking (especially since I'd voiced it so many times before the coldness that I now wore day and night took over) because he said, "Enough, Ali. You were right. I already ate and there are others who _need_ it more than I do." Of course these words of his went far beyond the hunger for food alone - far beyond what an enchilada brought to mind in the sense of hunger. No, he'd meant our collective hunger for justice and the growling, empty stomach of the mutant society that had gone unnoticed for too long. He'd meant the pains those that had slipped through the gaping cracks suffered daily as opposed to us who'd clung onto the crumbling edges of the foundation that society as a whole - mutant and human alike - was basing everything and every action and thought on.

Plain and simple, he'd just lain out the 'why' of our persistency in living in such a dump when we weren't (well at least I definitely wasn't) being hunted in spite of our little genetic quirks. He'd said in not so many words that the reason for me even being able to pull my shit together and stay alive after what happened with John was that, even though losing him hurt, watching (and with near helplessness) my cousins and God knows how many others struggle free from the grips of SWAT specialists and shoot off running for not only their freedom but for their lives as well, hurt too. It hurt almost as much as the first time my peers stood away from me as I'd somehow lifted a few inches off the ground in first grade. Of course, this time I was far more quick witted, lighter on my size 6.5s and, despite not being alone (for my cousins had long since manifested their abilities), far more angry because it was those very specialists that had grabbed Anthony to torture him, then again along with Eduardo after the explosion and tried to detain them who were now combing the streets for only "specific mutants"…. It was politics and hypocrisy at its best.

After a short and, from what I could tell by the expression on his face, a clearly thoughtful silence, he pondered aloud more to himself than to me, "Do you think they'll ever give up on being so hypocritical and just declare full blown war on us?"

To anyone else the question would have seemed a little cracked. Wasn't there a full blown war already underway? Was that not the reason for such devastation flooding the streets of NY? Why everyday that passed the underground society of mutants became more and more restless and why with every protest at least four or five mutants would end up dead? Anyone in their right mind would agree that snatching up a seventeen year old, pregnant mutant and having her publicly impaled in the most gruesome and painful of ways like some medieval executioner just to prove the point that breeding was banned amongst mutants was considered full blown war to its most maximized scale...right? Clearly Anthony, Eduardo, and myself along with millions of mutants - not just locals but worldwide - thought so. However, what special-ops SWAT agent Michael Smith had implied by "asking nicely" for me to help him find Magneto ("the real murderer of President Kelly") before he changed his mind and declared full out war was in fact and very dangerously the exact opposite. He had implied that night in the Statue of Liberty's torch and was proving from his stance in the Oval Office that what has been happening and what will happen until he loses his patience is merely the beginning glimpses at the hems of the robes worn by the monster he had in store for my kind...

"I wouldn't put it past Smith to _want_ to, and judging from what he's been doing...I dunno, Ant. He might as well do it after the last Decree he signed. I mean, _really_? Pre-natal genetic experimenting to rid all future generations of the X-gene? God only knows how many babies died or were born deformed and suffer as a result of non-funded and crude experiments before he legalized this shit just so he can look like the hero instead of the blind sided asshole that he is. No. It's wrong in every sense possible. He should just declare full blown civil war and see exactly what happens." I'd sat up by now and Anthony just stared at me with those green eyes of his, a look of awe and anger blended into his delicate features. It was in that moment, with so much anger flowing through me and with Anthony looking up at me - asking me with his eyes what _would_ happen, that I decided...


End file.
